


In the Memory of the Living

by glimmerglanger



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-02
Updated: 2018-06-02
Packaged: 2019-05-17 06:04:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14826744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glimmerglanger/pseuds/glimmerglanger
Summary: Nebula nodded, something angry in her movements; there was always something angry in the way she moved. She felt so familiar, an echo of what Thor missed most in the world that soothed and cut him all at once. “That’s what Thanos does,” she said. “He kills the things we love. But we’re going to make him pay for it.”





	In the Memory of the Living

Loki left Thor completely alone, the last of their kind.

Thor did not allow himself to think about his brother’s still form, the broken blood vessels in his eyes, not at first, not waking up surrounded by strangers in a strange ship. He could not think about his dead, about the Asgardian refugees floating, abandoned through space, about the veins standing in Loki’s face. He could not think about it, or he would think of nothing else; the universe did not have time for his distraction or the wild grief building behind his ribs.

Thor kept his focus on the steps he needed to take, laid out in front of him, one after the other. He needed a weapon. He needed a weapon so he could kill the purple bastard who had taken all that Thor had left in the universe.

And, abruptly, he had his weapon and his shot at Thanos, would-be god, murderer of all Thor loved that had yet lived. Thor had his shot and he took it. And he failed.

#

After, after Thanos shrugged off Thor’s attack, after he snapped his fingers and wiped out half of the universe, after everything, all of Thor’s thoughts caught up with him. The terrible memories, the stains on his mind, found him on Titan, where he brought his surviving friends, to rescue Stark and the woman called Nebula, who looked at the world with a loss in her eyes that echoed his own.

Thor saw a flash of black out of the corner of his eyes and turned while Stark spoke of revenge and grief. His heart tripped sideways, but there was nothing there, no familiar smirk, nothing but the memories of the dead, clawing their way free of his hold.

He shook his head, forcing aside the image of Loki, small in Thanos’s hand, his neck cleanly encircled, spitting words of poison even as the life was choked out of him—

“Hey, big guy,” Natasha said, quietly, as though she had said it before. She stood by his elbow. The rest of their group, the straggled survivors, the unworthy living who had been too weak to strike down Thanos, stared at him. Thor blinked at her, his true eye burning. “Do you have enough juice in the tank to get us home?”

Thor had no home to go to. No realm, no people, nothing. He bit back those words and nodded instead, raising his hand to the sky and calling the Bifrost down, Heimdall’s face graven into his mind’s eye, noble and true and dead, just like all the rest.

#

The others planned and schemed. Thor listened to them argue with one another, spitting words of blame and grief: ‘how could you’ and ‘if you had just’ and ‘because of you.’ Thor had no recriminations for any other. Thanos killed Loki in front of him, while he did _nothing_ , while he watched.

All Thor’s losses lay at his own feet, they hung around his neck. His weaknesses and failures caused them. If he had been wiser, perhaps Mother at least would have lived. Perhaps Father would have died in comfort on Asgard. If he had been stronger, he could have beaten Hera and spared over Asgard.

If he had been the king his people needed, they would not be floating, dead, through the wastes of space. Loki would be beside him--blessedly returned to his side, after so long away--but Thor had been granted only days of that torturous closeness. He could still feel Loki’s leathers under his hand. He had tried to hold onto Loki’s body, before the explosion, he had promised that at least they would be together in death.

He had failed at that, as well.

Who knew where Loki had drifted, what had become of his emptied body. He would not even receive the burial rites of their people. None of Asgard would.

Thor stared at Nebula, desperate to escape the choking guilt in his throat. He found in her restless movement an emotion akin to the weighted heaviness of his bones. Grief called to grief.

“What?” she demanded, eventually, spitting the words as she stalked over to him, her arms crossed over her chest.

He stared up at her, the hard line of her mouth, the darkness of her eyes, the tension in every line of her body, as though she would fly apart if not kept in terrible control. “Nothing,” he said. “You remind me of someone.”

She stared down at him and snorted. “I don’t have time for this,” she said, and turned on her heel. Thor watched her go, and in the stiff line of her shoulders he saw familiar tension, he could almost picture a broader back, a fall of dark hair, the glint of a knife, easily called to hand. His fingers twitched to reach out to it.

“Hey, Thor, buddy, where are you going?” Stark asked, staring at him with eyes as hollow as empty graves.

“To rest,” Thor lied, and took his bones and sins away from them.

#

Thor put his face in his hands in the quiet of the room they had provided him. Filth lay caked over his skin, dirt and blood, some of it his, some Thanos’s, some Loki’s. There had been no time to clean. Thor pushed his finger tips against his eyes, the true and the false, smelling death on his skin, trying not to remember, not to think.

The feat proved impossible. They were dead. All of his people, his family, his friends, all of them. They had lost their life in battle, and there was comfort in that, at least, but it was cold and terrible.

Thor’s breathing came ragged between his hands, rasping from a throat that felt filled with shattered glass. He had thought, leading the shattered remnants of his people from the wreck of their home, that he had lost all he could bear, but the universe had seen fit to prove him wrong, and taken more, until nothing else remained.

He laughed, the sound unwholesome in the dark silence of his room, his losses tangling in his mind. Mother and father, lost to him. All of Asgard, ripped and torn to dust. Loki, strangled while Thor watched, helpless. He’d proved as much a failure as a king as he had always feared he would be. The wetness of his tears spilled over his fingers, clearing trails through the dried blood and the dirt.

#

“So, where is Loki, anyway?” Banner asked, the next morning, the dark circles under his eyes proof that he had not slept. Thor doubted any of them had. Thor stared at him, the question freezing the tangled churn of his thoughts. Banner twisted his hands, his expression pinched tight. “I mean, it feels strange to say it, but we could probably, ah, use his help.”

“He is dead,” Thor said, the words dragging like daggers through his throat. “Thanos killed him.”

Banner stared, eyes widening. “Oh,” he said, glancing around the room. “That’s—but, we’ve all thought he was dead before. And we were wrong.”

Thor gritted his teeth so hard they creaked. Loki put death on and took it off again as it suited him. Thor had held him as he feigned death before, feeling his heart shred to pieces in his chest, feeling the world slip off of its axis.

The familiarity of the feelings had not made them easier to subsume. But, before, Loki had not promised to stay. He had not looked at Thor, warmth in his eyes. He had not sacrificed so much just for Thor’s unworthy life. Thor swallowed, or tried to. “I think it took this time,” he said.

“Ah,” Banner said, squirming. “That’s…. are you sure?”

Thor stared at him, and the question ate down through his thoughts, echoing the tiny voice he’d been pushing down. Because he was not sure. Loki had fooled him before, so many times. He delighted in doing what was not expected. And what larger subversion of expectations could there be than returning from the dead?

But he had burst back into the realm of the living already.

He felt as though his sanity hinged on holding onto some, _any_ , hope that perhaps his failure was not so complete, but that allowing the hope to take hold would ensure that it would prove false.

His thoughts spiraled in, and he shook his head, trying to clear his mind, to return his heartrate to a normal speed. “Any sign of the Other Guy?” he asked, desperate to speak of something, anything else, terrified of allowing any burst of hope to grow inside his chest.

#

Thor’s thoughts ate at one another, circling endlessly even as they prepared for such war as they could make now on Thanos. Their attempt seemed doomed to failure, but Thor could think of no better scheme. He would kill Thanos or die in the attempt. Either outcome felt acceptable.

All that he loved awaited him in Valhalla; he would not mourn to join all of his lost, nothing else remained to him in the realm of the living.

But he would dearly love to carve out the Mad Titan’s heart before making his way to family and friends stripped away from him. He thought of the possibility often, of splitting Thanos’s head in twain, from forehead to neck. He thought of getting his hands around Thanos’s throat and squeezing until the life went out of him, until he laid still and empty upon the ground, as Loki had, while Thor knelt there, bound and held, forced to watch all of his foulest nightmares playing out before his eyes.

“You want to talk about it?” his strange, rabbit friend asked, clambering over a bench and frowning at Thor as he polished his axe. “I wouldn’t normally ask, but there’s this massive storm building outside and I believe that you might be the focal point, as it were, and I don’t swim, as such.”

Thor looked across at him. “There is nothing to talk about.”

“See, you say that,” said Rocket, wagging a tiny finger. “But I don’t think it’s true.” He sighed, his ears drooping down along with his narrow shoulders. “It’s not like I wouldn’t understand,” he said. “I got no people. No one else like me. But my crew—all of them—they’re gone, thanks to that bastard.” Rocket sniffed then, and his shoulders shook.

Thor reached out, resting his hand on Rocket’s back, feeling mechanical things moving there, under fur and leather. They had all lost. He did not discount their grief. But he prayed that, for their sakes, they could not understand what he felt, not truly. He would not wish the empty space inside his chest on any living being, the crushing weight of grief and loss that threatened to suffocate him with each breath.

“Right,” Rocket scrubbed at his snout. “Well. We’ll just have to kill him real good, huh?”

Thor nodded. He said, his voice gravel over glass, “I look forward to that very much.” It was the only thing that kept him breathing, from one moment to the next.

#

“Who was he?” Nebula asked, her forearms buried in one of the ships they were rigging up, part of the spear-point of their attack on Thanos. Thor worked beside her, vaguely familiar with the technology used in the craft’s construction and therefore more qualified than nearly everyone else remaining to their team.

He frowned over a delicate piece of circuitry—this work always appealed more to Loki, who had the long, clever fingers for it—and asked, “Who?”

“The man you scream for in your sleep.” Nebula’s voice hummed, always full of slight feedback and scorn. Thor felt ice side down his spine, knowing of who she had to speak before she added, “ _Loki_.”

Thor tried to find the words and failed. The image of Loki, suspending, choking to death, right there, where Thor should have been able to save him, rose unbidden behind his eye. He shoved it aside, wishing he could picture Loki in any other way, at any other time--he had never had that problem before, always in the past images of Loki’s deep eyes, mobile smile, long neck had appeared to him almost unbidden, at times both appropriate and not--but the memories would not come. “He was the last of my people,” Thor said, finally.

“What was he like?” Nebula asked, her gaze and attention on the machinery in front of her. She focused on the tasks they needed to accomplish with the same single-minded determination that Thor felt driving him forward.

The question brought Thor up short. He stared down at the machinery, circuity too small for his fingers, and said, “He was….” Loki was too many things to put into words, really. He had been ever outside of the realm of what Thor expected, his quicksilver mind moving steps ahead of everyone else, sometimes on what seemed to be an entirely different realm, half of the time with schemes that seemed nonsensical until, suddenly, with a new piece of information, they made perfect sense.

He frowned, thinking about Loki, about his tangled actions, about every time he had transformed into a snake and sank fangs into Thor’s flesh. He wished, then, that he had told Banner and the Valkyrie about the rest of the story, about his fight against a great serpent as a man grown, when the beast had sunk teeth deep into his gut.

The serpent had supposedly carried a venom that turned flesh into liquid, but Thor had felt no ill effects, besides a burning through his veins. He’d gloated about it, after the battle, the serpent’s head left at his feet while he peeled off his armor. “What did you expect?” Loki had asked him, flicking his gaze up, almost bored. “I doubt you’ve been vulnerable to any poison for a hundred years or more.”

“What?” Thor had asked, casting his bracers onto the bed, turning to focus on Loki, his leathers parted over his chest, his hair tangled around his jaw, and the battle-heat in Thor’s blood had boiled over in a different direction, one he knew too well when looking upon his brother, one he was well practiced in restraining, and—

And Loki had stepped towards him, stillness taking over Thor’s form as a thousand impossible scenarios played out before his eyes. Loki had curled fingers around Thor’s wrist, lifted his arm, and pressed teeth into Thor’s skin, gentle in the way he only rarely chose to be, made all the more moving for that scarceness.

Thor had felt Loki’s breath panting over his skin, hot and wet, and he had been grateful for his helmet, held in front of his waist. Loki lifted his mouth after only a second, flashing Thor a brilliant smile that Thor could not return, too much of his mind caught up in the shape of Loki’s lips, the line of his throat, the flash of his teeth.

Loki had stepped back, and Thor had nearly followed him, had nearly twisted his fingers into Loki’s hair and dragged his mouth to other uses, forgetting himself, or remembering and no longer caring, and—

“He was….” Thor ran out of words, his throat tightening in a vice around all else he might say.

“You loved him,” Nebula said, something bitter in her voice.

Thor swallowed. Love felt too simple a word for what he felt for Loki, but perhaps that did not make it less accurate. He would have traded anything to have Loki by his side once more, to go back to that accursed freighter, to trade his life of Loki’s. “Yes,” he said, the admission cutting up under his ribs, into all the soft parts of him. “I did.”

Nebula nodded, something angry in her movements; there was always something angry in the way she moved. She felt so familiar, an echo of what he missed most in the world that soothed and cut him all at once. “That’s what Thanos does,” she said. “He kills the things we love. But we’re going to make him pay for it.”

#

Thor thought about calling Loki’s name in his sleep, the knowledge springing back into his mind no matter how many times he tried to dismiss it. He wondered what he dreamed. He had no memory of the images that visited him in the night. Perhaps that was a mercy. The vivid memory of Loki’s death plagued him enough in his waking hours.

He did not need the memory haunting his dreams, as well, but he did not doubt that it did.

Thor strove not to think, building their fleet, gathering all the broken souls in the universe who would give anything to see Thanos brought low. Sometimes the thoughts crept back anyway, whispering _maybe_ into his ears, and he shoved them aside, terrified that if he dared to hope that Loki would not be able to return, that he would be lost, that Thor would finally be truly and completely alone.

#

In the end, they went after Thanos with what amounted to half of a plan, poorly conceived and poorly executed. Thor offered no arguments, no better suggestions. He looked forward to a death in battle, that he might be returned to his people, though he desired very much to see Thanos’s head on the end of his weapon before the life faded out of his veins.

They found Thanos on a beautiful planet, a paradise, a reward for the monster who had taken all that Thor yet loved and strangled the life from him. Thor set the Bifrost through Thanos’s home, tearing it apart with the power that he had lacked when it truly mattered—why had Heimdall not sent Loki to Earth, instead of Banner, why not—

Thor landed with his weapon in hand and his mouth tasting of blood. He surged into the mad fray of battle, the entirety of the universe’s champions arrayed against one being and _still_ outmatched. He watched his compatriots hurl themselves forward, twisting into unnatural shapes, removed from existence, destroyed, and Thor understood, then, that they could not destroy Thanos.

The relief of the realization shook him.

Thor fought onward with renewed vigor, picturing in his mind Valhalla’s vaunted halls, his mother’s smile, his father’s quiet pride, the darkness of Loki’s eyes—

His soul yearned for all he had lost. And so, perhaps, it was no great surprise when Thanos struck him a blow, knocking him to the ground and dashing the sense from his skull. Thor spat blood out onto the ground, his fingers numb around his weapon, the shouts and screams of his fellows faded in his ears.

“You just don’t learn,” Thanos said, shaking his head and putting his foot on the center of Thor’s chest. “None of you learn. You come here to fight me.” He pushed down, Thor’s ribs compressed between his boot and the hard earth. Thor gripped his ankle, trying to call down the lightning, but one lazy wave of Thanos’s hand brushed it aside. “You should be _thanking_ me.”

Thor snarled, rage and hatred and grief all tangled together in his chest. “You killed all that I loved.”

“Then you should thank me more than most,” Thanos said. “I have removed all that made you weak, I have—”

Thor cried out, the sound torn from his throat. He swung upward with his weapon, strength that he had not known he possessed behind the blow, and Thanos caught the edge with one hand, staring down at Thor impassively.

Thanos scoffed. “I grow weary of your lack of appreciation. If you miss your dead so much, I will send you to join them.” He tossed Thor’s axe to the side, the pressure on Thor’s chest increasing, until his bones creaked, until he gasped for breath, all his strength stolen by the Stones.

He saw, as his vision grew white all around the edges, the slant of Loki’s smile, the fall of his hair, the clever twist of his fingers. Death tempted him sweetly. But he would not pass, not yet, not before he took his pound of flesh for the crimes Thanos had committed.

Thor fought, struggling for another breath, barely able to hear the others as they raged against the barrier Thanos has set between them. Some dark shadow shifted behind Thanos, no doubt some new magic of his, unimportant. Thor gritted out, “No.”

Thanos smiled then, thin and terrible. “Yes,” he said, and he leaned all of his weight forward, and—

And Thor _heard_ the impact of metal against flesh, before anything else. Thanos grunted, pain in the sound, and his weight disappeared all at once, thrown off. Thor coughed, rolling onto his side, swallowing desperately at the air and trying to blink the spots from his vision, expecting… he knew not who he expected to find standing as savior over him.

The reality outshone any expectation.

Loki stood panting before him, his hair in wild disarray around his face, his mouth open as he dragged in desperate breaths. His leathers looked battered, ruined. Bandages covered wounds across his flesh. His cheeks were cut sharp, his lips cracked as though from long thirst. And in one hand he held Mjolnir, his pale fingers curled around her handle. He grinned, then, and turned his head to the side and spat, and said, “I can see why you like doing that.”

“Loki.” Thor’s voice sounded shredded, unfamiliar, the voice of a broken man. Loki grinned down at him, his dark hair caught by the wind, Mjolnir in his hand. He reached down with his free hand, and his flesh felt cool and solid when Thor gripped him tight.

Loki pulled him to his feet and asked, with one of his wild smiles, “Did you miss me?”

Thor felt as though someone had split open his chest. He cried out, half a laugh, and threw an arm around Loki, crushing him close. His eyes burned. “You are here,” he said, against the side of Loki’s head. “I hoped. I _hoped_. I am so—”

“A touching reunion,” Thanos said, his voice a rumble. Thor stiffened, releasing Loki and shoving him back a step. Thanos would not hold him helpless again. He would not find Thor lacking. Not again. Not when Loki had, impossibly, returned to him once more. “Enjoy it, for it will be brief. I have already killed you once, Asgardian. I know not what fool arrogance has prompted you to return to your doom, but it does not matter.”

 Thanos lifted his gauntleted hand, his fingers poised to snap, and panic ran through Thor’s veins. He prepared to lunge forward—his only option would be killing Thanos in the next second, or else who knew what he would do, what horror he would wreck on Loki, on the others, on—

“Ah,” Loki chided, stepping up beside Thor, one hand lifted, swirls of light playing around his fingers. Identical lights circled the Gauntlet. Thanos’s fingers remained poised, frozen, caught. “None of that, now,” Loki said, a hint of strain in his voice. “I believe this is yours.” He offered out Mjolnir, sparring Thor the briefest grin.

Thor took the hammer, its familiar weight every reassurance he could have asked for. “How?” he asked, looking from the runes on its surface back to Loki’s face, the furrow of concentration in his brow, the leanness of his cheeks, how—

“I’ll explain everything later,” Loki said, the barest tremor in his hands as around them the barrier holding back the others faded and fell, no longer maintained by Thanos’s magics. “I think we should handle this first, don’t you?”

And, indeed, Thanos looked ready to tear them all limb from limb, fury bubbling in his tiny eyes and written in the jut of his jaw.

Thor nodded, calling his axe to his other hand and readjusting his grip on his weapons. He stepped in front of Loki, a smile curling the corners of his mouth, wild exaltation and the hunger for battle such as he had thought he would never experience again filling his veins.

#

“Not joining the party?” Loki asked, after, after Thanos lay broken and defeated, after Stark took the Gauntlet, after so many of their dead were returned to them. Not all had been reformed. Only those who Thanos destroyed with that terrible snap of his fingers.

The rest of Asgard remained in Valhalla, lost to the glorious halls of the dead.

Only Loki had returned to Thor. There was a heaviness in acknowledging that Thor would not have traded him for any other, heaviness and guilt and relief and so many other emotions that Thor had retreated to his quarters, trying to fit all he felt inside the feeble cage of his bones.

And Loki had followed him, it seemed, standing inside the doorway Stark had given Thor, after their return to Earth, suddenly, welcoming himself into Thor’s space, as ever he had, save for those terrible years when he had not.

Thor stared, hungry still for the sight of him, the sharp angles of his face animated once more with life, his eyes bright, his lips turned up in one corner. Tightness closed around Thor’s throat and he sniffed, looking to the side, striving to master his voice before speaking. “I hoped,” he said, ignoring the question. “I hoped that you still lived. I wish you had returned sooner.”

He thought he understood why the ploy had been necessary. He did not fault Loki for escaping, for convincing Thanos of his death. He just failed to understand why Loki had chosen to make _him_ believe it for so long. The grief and horror of being alone, of thinking he had failed everyone, even Loki, so utterly, had been a crushing weight. Thor had not shaken it yet.

Loki’s expression flattened for a moment, something moving across his dark eyes. He took another step into the room, settling Mjolnir down on the end table. Mjolnir kept finding her way to his side, Thor noticed. He would need to question that, eventually. “I returned as quickly as I could. My path was long.”

Thor hummed, feeling his mouth smile involuntarily. A part of him wanted to rage--surely at least Loki could have sent him a message--but his anger could not hold out in front of his relief. Perhaps it would return later.

He moved forward and reached out, cupping the side of Loki’s head, his ink-dark hair smooth as silk, falling in loose waves around his shoulders. Loki looked up at Thor, his eyes gone wide and round, surprised. He did not step away. “Was it? Where were you?” Thor asked.

Loki stared at him, lips parted, just a little. Some calculation passed behind his eyes and he raised a hand, curling his fingers gently around Thor’s wrist. “In the land of the dead.” Stones churned in Thor’s gut.

Thor could only stare, trying not to think of Loki’s body hanging in Thanos’s grip, or the veins standing against his skin, or the trade of Loki’s life for his own. He said, “Are you—you mean to tell me that you went to the land of the dead? Would you have me believe you died?”

“There was no other way,” Loki said, wetting his bottom lip. “I needed secrets only the dead had. And your hammer, of course.” Thor thought of Thanos, trying to snap his fingers, of Loki’s smug smile, the twist of his hand and the lights around his fingers. He thought to glance towards Mjolnir, but could not look away from Loki’s eyes. Too many questions built on his tongue, fighting to escape.

“Did you see mother? Father?”

“Mm. And others. They were very proud of you,” Loki said, and to his surprise, Thor heard neither scorn nor muted hatred in the statement. Thor gulped in a shuddering breath. His fingers curled into Loki’s hair, looking for an anchor. Loki stared at him through his reaction, something watchful and cautious in his face.

“What?” Thor asked, his voice a rasp.

“I expected righteous anger,” Loki said, and, indeed, now that he looked for it, Thor felt the tension beneath Loki’s skin. “I mean, I was confident I could convince you to continue suffering me to live, but I did escape from the land of the dead and—”

“And you imagined I would be angry about that?” Thor interrupted, the shock of being so thoroughly misunderstood running through his blood like ice.

Loki glanced to the side and said, “It is anathema, but—”

Thor brought his other hand up, cupping Loki’s face, holding him in place, so he could not disappear away, the proof of his presence in the beat of his pulse against Thor’s palm. Loki’s mouth fell open, just a little. His eyes widened when Thor spoke. “If you had not returned, I would have quested to Valhalla and brought you back myself.” He realized, only as he said it, that it was the truth. If they had someone beaten Thanos, if Thor had lived, he would have gone to retrieve what was his. What else could he have done?

“Thor,” Loki said his name like a question, his eyes so close that Thor could see the individual flecks of color in each iris. They were too close, really. Too close, as Thor had always been so careful to avoid.

And yet not close enough to satisfy the need in Thor’s gut. It seemed impossible that, after everything that had been stripped away and taken from him, this shameful heat still lived in his soul. But there it remained, kindled anew by the flutter of Loki’s eyelashes, the pinkness of his tongue when he wetted his lip.

“I thought I had lost everything,” Thor said, quiet, a secret whispered almost against Loki’s mouth. “Mother, father, Asgard. But I still had you. You were returned to me. And then I lost you, too. I could not bear it, Loki. Do you understand me? I could not bear it. I could not….” He grimaced, bowing his head, his tongue tangling around words he ought not speak. Already Loki stared at him as though struck, mute and wide-eyed.

Thor pushed his forehead against Loki’s, squeezing his eyes closed, and contented himself with that touch.

“Sh,” Loki said, quiet. “I am returned once more.”

Thor nodded, skin rubbing against skin. “Yes. You are. I would have you remain. I would have you live. I have held you twice while you died,” Thor said. “Do not make me do it a third time.”

Loki held the quiet, for a moment, and then he sighed softly, turning his face against Thor’s hand. He said, “I found many secrets, in the land of the dead.”

The reminder of his death squeezed around Thor’s chest like bands of ice. “Then you will not need to return there for—”

“Thor,” Loki interrupted, his fingers coming to rest soft and cool against Thor’s cheek. His voice sounded strange, wondering. He pushed, just enough to guide Thor back. His eyes shone, dark with considerations Thor could not imagine. “Some of the secrets I found were false. Or I… thought they were.” He tilted his head to the side, as though he needed to examine Thor from a different angle.

“Does it matter now?” Thor asked, aware increasingly that their embrace had lingered far too long, but unable to end it. A part of him worried that Loki would fade from the room, from being, if Thor released him. He sketched a smile, distracted by trying to ensure that his memory of Loki’s face was accurate, that he had forgotten nothing, that—

“It might,” Loki said, the furrow between his brows deepening. Loki stepped a little closer, his boot bumping against Thor’s. He dragged his nails down across Thor’s beard, sending chills down Thor’s spine. His fingertip brushed Thor’s bottom lip, and Thor sucked in a breath.

“Loki,” Thor said, quiet, raw, restraint taking what energy he had left from the fight. He heard the roughness in his own voice. He needed to move back. But his skin hungered for this touch. His bones called for it. “What are you doing?”

“Testing the advice of the dead.” And Loki rocked forward, lifting just slightly onto his toes. He did not have far to go. Thor’s breath caught in the back of his throat. He froze, as still as any statue, a thousand dreams fulfilled all at once when Loki pressed a kiss to his mouth.

It lasted barely a moment, nothing more than a brush of lips to lips. And then Loki shifted back, humming thoughtfully. Thor made a hungry sound, desperate, and pulled him back before his mind could form a thought. He kissed Loki firmly, with purpose, finding his soft lips cool and real. Thor kissed him as though the world were ending still, as though he had been waiting for hundreds of years, as though Loki had returned to him from the dead.

Loki made a sound, soft, against his mouth. For a moment Loki seemed frozen to ice under his hands, and then his fingers curled into Thor’s armor, pulling and tugging. “Yes,” Thor panted, unsure how they had gotten here, unsure what the dead could have possibly told Loki to prompt this. He did not care. He had to get closer, suddenly, immediately. He kept a hand anchored in Loki’s hair, pushing forward, until they came to a sudden stop, Loki’s grunt of surprise caught against his mouth. A wall. They’d found a wall.

Thor pressed Loki against it; he liked this feeling, liked blocking Loki in, keeping him there, keeping everything else out. Loki panted, “Ah!” when Thor kissed along his jaw, his fingers working at the seams on Thor’s armor, before Thor waved a hand, dismissing his chest plate and greaves, leaving his cape to pool around their feet.

Loki’s hands landed on Thor’s bare skin, startlingly cool against Thor’s overheated skin. He felt lightning moving under his skin, wild, looking for a way out, jumping out of his flesh to meet Loki’s fingertips. Loki arched against him, his head thrown back, his fingers curling, nails biting against flesh. Thor pressed his forehead to Loki’s collarbone, gritting his teeth, fighting down the storm in his bones. “Sorry,” he gritted out.

“Ngh,” Loki groaned, throaty. His breathing had grown loud, so much louder than the party outside their walls. “Why are you apologizing? Let it out. I can take it. I _want_ to.”

Thor froze, the words running around his head and down his spine. He had never taken anyone to his bed that could survive him letting it out. But Loki could. The words were not just dust. Loki was a god, his match, his—

He surged back to meet Loki’s mouth, feeling as though he was coming undone under his skin, finally, blessedly. The smell of ozone filled the room. Thunder rumbled outside, loud enough that Thor heard exclamations from the other rooms. He cared little for them. Loki groaned, rocking against him, the silks and leathers he wore dissolving into wisps and shadows. His cold met Thor’s heat. Thor breathed in their steam, pressing closer, all thoughts and hurts and losses temporarily forgotten, washed away by the hunger in Loki’s kiss, the expanse of his willing flesh, and thickness in his voice when he first panted and then yelled Thor’s name.

Thor held him tightly, claiming all he had left in the universe, returned from the dead to be his once more.


End file.
